Out-of-work men bare souls, more in ABQ Little Theatre’s ‘Full Monty’
Rust is devouring Buffalo’s steel mills, and six men are out of work. Jerry collects unemployment checks as he struggles to support his son, Nathan. His wife, Pam, left him for another man, and she’s threatening to take him to court.
Then Jerry catches Pam and her girlfriends going crazy over some Chippendales dancers.
“The Full Monty,” opening on Friday, May 25, bares it all at the Albuquerque Little Theatre.
The musical comedy sticks closely to the plot of the 1997 movie, transferring it from Sheffield, England, to New York.
“It’s really a touching story,” director Henry Avery said. “The town of Buffalo is economically challenged, and all the factories are closed and all the men are out of
work.”
The dejected men describe themselves as “scrap.”
But the women aren’t out of work; the downturn has turned them into de facto breadwinners. They funnel their disposable income into a girls’ night out with male strippers.
“The men are all jealous,” Avery said.
One bemoans his weight, another still lives with his mother.
So Jerry recruits five of his unemployed friends to learn to bump and grind.
Of course, they can’t dance. The former co-workers perform a clumsy series of strip club auditions. Jerry fires them up, coaching them to think of it not as dance, but as sports moves.
As the men rehearse, their wives get suspicious. When one discovers her husband’s G-string, she becomes convinced he’s having an affair.
Jerry declares them better than Chippendales because they’ll go “the full monty” and strip all the way.
“It’s very tasteful; nobody shows anything really,” Avery said. “It’s done with lights.”
ALT last produced the show about 10 years ago, he said.
“They find a lot more than the money. They find themselves.”